Details of $463K Christmas Day bank heist revealed in labour battle between Brinks and fired guard
Jason Proctor | CBC News | Posted: December 24, 2022 9:00 AM | Last Updated: December 24, 2022
Theft of almost half a million dollars from Langley ATMs detailed in B.C. Supreme Court ruling
On Christmas Day 2016, four people wearing what were described as flesh-toned masks and winter clothing made what you might call the ultimate in unauthorized withdrawals from five bank machines in Langley, B.C.
They stole nearly half a million dollars in a Yuletide heist that has never resulted in charges, or even public disclosure — until now.
The main suspect in the robbery — a former Brinks Company guard — has been fighting to get his job back since the global security firm fired him in November 2018. And Brinks has been trying to get him to pay back $463,220 it shelled out to make things whole for the victim bank.
The dispute has come before both a labour arbitrator and a B.C. Supreme Court judge, who ruled last month that the arbitrator was correct in deciding he had the jurisdiction to decide the matter.
CBC News has obtained the court documents filed in relation to the latest ruling, which detail a criminal caper described in one set of submissions as "involving significant planning and technical aspects."
A test run?
The story begins on Nov. 22, 2014 — when the suspect was hired.
According to one of the company's submissions, Brinks armoured guards use specialized keys, PIN numbers and combinations to access bank machines on assigned routes.
Each guard is assigned a separate key with a unique serial number that triggers an internal device in a high-security lock to record a date and time of access.
Brinks generates new combinations for each armoured guard assigned to a run. Guards are issued the combinations by identifying themselves to the company's national client services centre prior to each outing.
Brinks claims the suspect copied a co-worker's key at some point and also obtained his PIN number. In one submission, the guards' union, Unifor Local 114, refers to the co-worker as "Mr. X."
"The employer alleges that on Dec. 17, 2016, the [suspect] or another person, pretending to be Mr. X, made two separate calls ... to obtain combinations," the document reads.
"They characterize the purpose of this call as being a test to see if the robbers could obtain the combination for the [bank machines] that they would break into on the night of the robbery."
'An intimate knowledge'
According to the court documents, in the months before the heist, the suspect was regularly assigned to a run containing the branches that were hit "and would have acquired in that time an intimate knowledge of the location of doors, lights switches and alarms."
He went on medical leave two weeks prior to the robbery and was off work on Christmas Day.
On Christmas Eve, someone pretending to be Mr. X called Brinks to obtain 13 combinations for seven bank branches.
But the company alleges this was no dress rehearsal.
The union's submissions describe the robberies as they unfolded on video surveillance.
"Two robbers are seen at each location unlocking the doors to the bank branch and then proceeding through open areas of the branch to an entrance to an ATM room. The robbers then enter the ATM room. At that point, one of the robbers obscures the range of view of a surveillance camera with an umbrella," the union states.
"The two robbers then proceed to breach the security system on the ATM machine itself. From there, money is removed from the ATM and put into a bag, and the robbers proceed back out of the ATM room and then the branch building."
Court documents say the stolen money was in "$20 and $50 denomination notes."
Brinks believes the thieves purposely left just enough cash in each of the target ATMs to avoid triggering a network error that would have occurred if clients were unable to withdraw money.
The branches were re-armed after each hit, which ensured security guards were not alerted. The ATMs ran out of cash over the next three days.
Mr. X cleared of wrongdoing
The RCMP began an investigation into the robbery in January 2017. The company claims police scheduled interviews with 20 employees, including the suspect — who did not attend his.
Brinks also believes the suspect sent a virus from his phone which erased the contents of Apple devices belonging to several of his co-workers.
In March 2017, the RCMP cleared Mr. X of any wrongdoing after he went through "multiple police interviews, and participated in two polygraphs," the company claims.
According to the court documents, while no charges have ever been laid, the suspect was arrested at one point and the Vancouver Police Department received a call from Crime Stoppers claiming the suspect was involved.
The company's submissions include the back and forth between the company and the suspect in the two years following the robbery. They include stress leaves and a point at which the employee allegedly said, "lay me off and I will go away."
The latest B.C. Supreme Court decision means the questions of the suspect's job and the demand that he repay the cash Brinks forked out to its client will be settled by a labour arbitrator, as opposed to a civil court judge.
The union had claimed that Brinks was trying to use a collective agreement as a means to recoup a business loss.
But the B.C. Supreme Court judge who decided the matter said, "the conduct at issue is expressly covered by the collective agreement," which says employees will agree to further the interests of the armoured car industry and Brinks.
It's hard to imagine a bigger failure of that duty — according to the decision — than allegedly masterminding a half-million dollar Christmas heist.